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Thread: Building You Own PC Part 2!!!

  1. #1
    AFLAAACKKK!!
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    Post Building You Own PC Part 2!!!

    Well, the much anticipated Building your own PC part 2 tutorial is finally ready! We have already picked our parts, if you need the parts list again they can be found HERE.

    Warning: The assembly process should be done on a table, preferably wood. During the whole process make sure to touch the metal inside the case periodically to discharge any stored up static electricity in your body. Static electricity is your worst enemy through out this process.

    Preparing the Case

    Our first step of the assembly process is to prepare the case. If you look at the back of the case there is a face plate where the ports (mouse and keyboard, onboard VGA, onboard nic, etc) are normally located. Well, chances are that face plate won't fit our motherboard, so we're gonna pry that sucker out. Don't worry, the motherboard we bought comes with it's own unique face plate.

    Now take your motherboard out of the box and anti static back and place it on the antistatic bag. Discharge yourself before handling the motherboard. Now you need to find out which holes in the case to place the spacers in so your motherboard doesn't fry. The spacers should have came with your case. Try and estimate where to put the spacers by looking at your motherboard. Once you that that figured out place the face plate that came with the motherboard on the same place the old one was in the case and place motherboard behind it, making sure the ports on the motherboard fit in perfectly with the port holes in the face plate, and gently place the motherboard down, making sure the screw holes in the motherboard match up with the spacers. This usually requires some force, you might need to push the motherboard into the face plate to get the correct alignment. It might help to have 2 people do this, one to push the motherboard in, the other to screw in the screws into the spacers.

    Now you need to take out the plastic peice where our CD burner will go, just take out the top one.

    Now figure out which component slot on the back matches up with the AGP port and pry that out so you can install the graphics card later. This may sound complicated but it really isn't, once you have your case and motherboard set up everything else goes pretty smoothly.

    CPU, Heatsink and Fan

    Now take out your CPU, be sure to discharge yourself before doing this (yes, we will be discharging ourselves quite a bit during this whole process). Now if you look on your motherboard you will see the socket 478 slot. On the side of it is this little lever. Pull it out a little and then up. Now match the processor chip with the holes in the socket and drop it in. DO NOT JAM IT IN!! It is a ZIF (ZIF = zero insertion force) socket. The chip should just drop in, if it doesn't it's not lined up correctly. After it drops in pull the lever back down to secure the chip.

    Now for the heatsink and fan. You need to thermal grease for this. Sometimes your heatsink will already have it applied, but if it doesn't you just need to apply a thin layer of it. No bigger then dime size. Not all heatsinks and fans apply the same way, so in order to be sure you did it correctly, refer to the documentation that comes with it. It's won't be difficult, I beleive anyone can do it . Just be sure to plug the fan in! On our motherboard the correct place is the little white plastic jack with 4 holes in it. It's next to the big ATX power jack. If you don't plug in the fan your processor will fry in seconds, we don't want to waste our money!

    Installing RAM

    This is very easy, probably the easiest part of the whole process. Discharge yourself again. There are 2 white levers on the side of the slot. Make sure they are both pulled down. Just take out the stick of ram that we bought in the first tutorial. Place the ram facing the processor and gently but forcefully kind of rock it in. This might require alot some strength but don't overdue it. You can damage your slot or memory module. But they are pretty durable so you can beat them up a little. You'll know it's in because the 2 white arms you pulled down will automatically snap in place to secure the ram.

    Graphics Card

    This is done almost exactly like the ram. Discharge yourself. pull down the lever on the side of the AGP port. Take out the graphics card and rock it in like we did with the ram. Screw in the metal peice that now covers the opening that we made in the case preparation step. The screw should have came with the graphics card.

    Hard Drive and CD Burner Installation

    Now you have to install the hard drive. Take out the hard drive and on the back make sure the jumper is set to master. In order to make sure it's set to master check the documentaion that came with the hard drive. Usually the hard drive is set to master or cable select by default. It really doesn't matter because the computer will find the bootable device no matter what, unless it's set to boot from say... the floppy drive, which by default it isn't. In the case you should see a bunch of racks. These are obviously where the hard drive and disk drives go. On the buttom rack is usually the smallest rack and that is where the hard drive goes because there are no removable plastic covers covering it. Slide the hard drive in the bottom rack and screw it in. Now at the top of the racks, slide the CD burner in, the one where we took the plastic covering off. Screw it in.

    Now you should have 2 80 pin ribbon cables that came with the hard drive and cd burner. Discharge yourself yet again. Plug one in the hard drive and the other in the cd burner. Some people will say "make sure they plugged in the right way" but it's really pretty self explanatory. You should be able to figure out. Now plug the hard drive into the IDE interface in the mobo (mobo = motherboard ). It should probably be the one closest to the CPU but again, these days, it shouldn't really matter. Plug the cd burners ribbon cable into the remainding IDE interface.

    Power Everything Up!!

    Now we have to give everything power. This is easy. Discharge yourself one more time (are you sick of this yet?). Now look at your power supply, there will be a ton of different wires with plugs at the end coming our of it. Take the biggest one and plug it into the big huge plastic interface on the motherboard. Now there should be a bunch of medium sized plugs. These are molex plugs. Plug them into the hard drive and cd buner.

    Conclusion

    In your case should be a bunch of little wires with little plastic plugs at the end. There is no one way to connect these into the motherboard. You going to have to look in your motherboard documentation to correctly place them in your motherboard. It isn't to hard though.

    If you plug your computer in the wall, a green LED should light up on your motheroard. This is a good thing, it tells you your motherboard is getting power.

    Many people will say to get a anti static wrist strap. If you are a technician fixing 20 computers a day, that's fine, but you really don't need one for building your own PC. Besides, simply touching the metal in the case shouldn't be to hard and it works just fine.

    You are bound to have to make some kind of cmos configurations in the bios when you start up. There really isn't one way to do this, it will vary depending on the manufacturer and version you have. And don't forget to install your OS and drivers. The driver CD's come with your motherboard and graphics card. There are tons of tutorials on installing OS's on AO.

    Anyway, I hope you all learned something, novice and experts alike. If you didn't know what was inside your computer, now you do. If you didn't know what you needed to buy or do to build your own PC, now you do.

    BTW, I am open to any constructive critisism.
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  2. #2
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    Good tutorial 'The Duck'. In my rating scale you get 9 points out of 10. I would have though, liked to know a little bit more in the CPU, Heatsink and Fan part of the tutorial. I would have liked for that part specially, since its probably the hardest part, to have been a little bit more descriptive. I would have liked to know about What if the CPU would not have slipped in perfectly with the ZIF. Can I align the CPU pins and if so with what? But thanks for the tutorial. Good information never goes to waste.

  3. #3
    AFLAAACKKK!!
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    lol, to answer your question you can't bend the pins. At least not that I know of . If the cpu doesn't drop in not matter which way you align it, then you obviously have the wrong type of cpu for the socket.

    P.S. I'm glad you got something useful out of my tutorial
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  4. #4
    They call me the Hunted foxyloxley's Avatar
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    to answer your question you can't bend the pins.
    I think you'll find that they bendddd REAL easy

    Just making 'em fit AFTERWARDS is a bitch

    The ZIF [zero insertion force] if you look at the layout of the pins, you will see that the 'square' layout is incomplete, and that one corner is missing.
    Just make sure that you line the 'missing' corners up, and it WILL drop in.

    Duck :
    Rather than saying "touch the case on a regular basis to avoid static build up" and then repeating it through the tut. Just tell people to get and WEAR the anti-stat straps, and just do it the once, at the top, bold, underlined [you get the picture]

    Many people will say to get a anti static wrist strap. If you are a technician fixing 20 computers a day, that's fine, but you really don't need one for building your own PC. Besides, simply touching the metal in the case shouldn't be to hard and it works just fine.
    just not good enough for this litigious world in which we live
    Tell them the RIGHT way.
    If you were to write that down in an exam, you would be marked down as wrong.

    And as a tech I was on the wrong side of FORTY PC's a day to repair. :slave:

    Touching the case, when it is on an insulator [wood] and disconnected from the electrical earth does NOT guarantee discharge, it merely keeps the potential difference between you and the case, at around about the same, until the case becomes too negative [electrons are neg] and electrons are what you are giving the case, you effectively can give a shock to the case, and just rubbing hands can generate 3500 volts of static charge.

    Enough niggles :
    It was nicely put, if a little patronising, just make the tut impersonal, and let the info come through the screen.

    Was that ANOTHER niggle

    Pax
    so now I'm in my SIXTIES FFS
    WTAF, how did that happen, so no more alterations to the sig, it will remain as is now

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  5. #5
    AFLAAACKKK!!
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    I think you'll find that they bendddd REAL easy
    When I said that, I meant that you shouldn't bend the pins and still expect a working processor lol. At least that's what I THINK, I'v never ectually tried bending the pins lol...

    quote:
    Many people will say to get a anti static wrist strap. If you are a technician fixing 20 computers a day, that's fine, but you really don't need one for building your own PC. Besides, simply touching the metal in the case shouldn't be to hard and it works just fine.

    just not good enough for this litigious world in which we live
    Tell them the RIGHT way.
    I guess your right about that, I should have told them to get the anti static wrist strap. I was just judging from my own personal experiences. I can't expect the world to touch the case as many times as I do during this process. In my own personal experience I have had very minimal problems due to static.

    Thanks for the tips, I appreciate it .
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  6. #6
    Senior Member nihil's Avatar
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    All I would add is that I would recommend spending the extra few dollars on SILVER based thermal paste. It is 20 times more efficient than the white gunk that usually comes in the box.


  7. #7
    AFLAAACKKK!!
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    Ah, thank you nihil, nice suggestion
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  8. #8
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    ACtually you can straigthen out the pins and still have a working CPU. If you have to many of them that are bent, you should immediately return your CPU for a new one. But if it is only one bent pin. and i mean slightly bent, you can use a mechanical pencil, "withought the lead" to straightne the pin back in place. And it will work just fine.

  9. #9
    AFLAAACKKK!!
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    Oh, you mean if you bought it and when you opened it it was already bent? Well, in that case I don't think I would even try to fix it, I would just return it for a new one. returning it won't cost a dime. Why risk the chance of voiding the warranty by trying to fix it yourself? But I have been fortunate enough to not have bought a defective cpu as of yet... Knock on wood .
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  10. #10
    ********** |ceWriterguy
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    Kyrios is right - and gave us a good tip there. Beats hell out of trying it with needle nose pliers or tweezers. The trick is to *very gently* do the bending/straightening - too much force or bending too close to the chip can and will very easily damage circuits within it.

    Nihil - who makes the best silver thermal paste anyway? I'm in the market for some of late - time to change out my cpu fan yet again, meaning the heatsink needs cleaning too. (I can hear the it over the psu fan, which means it's wiping a bearing.)

    Oh, and finally to Duck - It's not necessarily a defective processor purchase - if you're a klutz like me, it could be as simple as a tool dropped at the wrong moment. Remember the |ceHouse is the home to the 5 minute motherboard swap

    [edit] Wow. Post 669. Somehow I don't feel quite as satanic now as I did 3 posts ago...[/edit]
    Even a broken watch is correct twice a day.

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